


Brooding on Balconies

by ivyness



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan)
Genre: Brooding, Crack, M/M, Secret Identity, Secret Identity Fail
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-26 03:18:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17737988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyness/pseuds/ivyness
Summary: “I’m a detective, you’re a detective. How did you not know?”





	Brooding on Balconies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sarren](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarren/gifts).



> FYI I actually haven't seen any of the Batman movies so everyone is wildly OOC. Head the crack warning. Literally nothing is taken seriously.

The rain fell like a grey sludge, blurring the line between darkness and light, a typical day in Gotham City. But inside Wayne Manor it was most certainly not a typical day.

Alfred walked sedately through the Manor’s largest ballroom, orchestrating a chaos of hired hands. He warned the group lugging in banquet tables away from the  _ extremely fragile _ , three million dollar vases, directed the caterer to the use of ground’s vegetable garden, and kept a careful eye on the decorator who tended to get into tiffs with the florist which led to undesirable color experimentations inflicted upon the walls. And despite the air of frantic desperation, excitement was in the air. No one threw parties like Bruce Wayne and no one tipped better than Wayne Manor.

Over by the stage, the Master of Ceremony was getting into an exuberant row with the Disc Jockey and Alfred swiftly disengaged the two by pointedly asking after the change in lineup and the results of their mic test. The two looked momentarily abashed and turned quickly to their tasks. Alfred, sighed, if only everyone in his care was so obliging.

Alfred found Master Bruce on the ballroom’s furthest balcony.  It’s entrance was shadowed by heavily layered curtains and was the only balcony not shielded from the harsh wind and rain. It somehow made Gotham’s ragged, smog-filled skyline look even more lonely and decrepit than usual. The ballroom’s music was eerily muted and the potted plants did nothing to ease the vicious scowl on Bruce Wayne’s face. 

Alfred sighed, Master Bruce was, as usual, brooding.

“We need to cancel,” said Bruce without turning away from the doom and gloom.

“Of course, Master Bruce,” said Alfred. “I should inform you that I had taken the initiative of naming Commissioner Gordon as the evening’s keynote speaker,” he paused significantly, “Shall you be informing him or shall I.”

A horrified look fell over Bruce’s face. “Why the hell would you do that?”

“He is the Commissioner of the Gotham Police Department,” said Alfred.

“That doesn’t mean we give him a speech!”

“Master Bruce,” said Alfred carefully, “You are holding a charity gala for the Gotham Police Department.”

Bruce looked stunned, as if he indeed, had forgotten what the gala was for. “But he hates writing speeches! If I cancel he will literally have me drawn and quartered. We can’t cancel.”

“Of course, Master Bruce.”

Bruce had the look of someone coming face to face with their own mortality, “He might still arrest me though, he hates parties.”

“Might I advise, Master Bruce,” Alfred said, politely but with the air of one giving unsolicited advice, knowing that it would most certainly be ignored, “Next time, just ask him out to dinner.”

Bruce scowled and went back to brooding in the rain.

*****

Bruce had been to a lot of parties and hosted his fair share as well. He knew most of the faces here, what they liked, what they disliked, how to get them angry, how to work a crowd, how to set up a distraction. The percentage of parties that had been crashed by supervillains was slightly higher for him than most but no one seemed to notice and he was still at the top of everyone’s guest list. 

Bruce knew parties. And this was one of the better ones; everyone putting on their best faces and playing nice. He was surrounded by people who were if not friends or allies, were at least not currently trying to kill him. It was a step up from his usual evenings.

And yet he still felt more comfortable in a Gotham back alley, kevlar catching bullets, skin tearing on pavement, murderers and psychopaths braying for his blood. Gotham crime was a breed of its own; violent, passionate, chaotic, it seeped into everyday life like a poison, sickening everyone in the city.

Bruce walked a circuit around the room, meeting and greeting his guests, encouraging donations, setting rivals against each other in increasingly extravagant displays of philanthropy. And all the while he spiraled his way inward, toward an unassuming bespectacled man in an old tux a size too big.

Bruce knew it was a mistake. He knew he should have stayed away from Jim Gordon but he couldn’t help it, he was like a moth to the flame. Jim, the strong-headed, open-hearted fool who looked at Batman with trust, never fear, who inspired hope in a city that grinded away dreams and exploited softness. There were so few people who gave themselves to the work and even fewer who still believed that Gotham was worth it. Sometimes, even Bruce doubted.

Batman was as much a product of Gotham’s poison as the Joker and Bruce would be damned if he let that poison touch the city’s last untainted soul.

*****

Jim sighed, he hated parties. He was pretty sure Bruce didn't actually give a shit about the regular, day-to-day officers of the GPD and was using the gala as an excuse to show off but that was a 300% improvement over the other Gotham socialites who all had some level of hit out on his head. They certainly didn’t throw charity galas for wounded GPD officers.

Bruce swaggered in front of him, somehow making a tailored tux look skin tight and obscene. He struck a pose showing off the line of his broad shoulders and the tight flex of his biceps. Jim was fairly certain it was a purely instinctual pose despite the strain it undoubtedly put on his lower back. Jim worried about the day Bruce turned 60, when all of a sudden time would catch up to him and his back would dump a lifetime of complaints on him all at once.

Bruce moved around the room like a dancer, artfully twisting his left side away from people. Jim snorted, “racing accident.” Sure, that was one way of putting it, and it certainly didn’t have anything to do with the little explosion down by the docks the other night that had Batman written all over it.

Gotham’s socialites glittered around him, their eyes barely glancing at him and the other GPD representatives and instead, they wander the room tinkling in seemingly inane conversation. “How is that cousin of yours” “Cancer, yes, quite dreadful” “It’s all that toxic waste running through the river” “The views along the water are not what they used to be.”

A hand on his elbow startled him from his eavesdropping. “Pardon the intrusion, Commissioner Gordon, your speech, sir,” said Alfred.

Grateful for Alfred’s warning, Jim took the time to settle his nerves as the MC announced him in  a string of long, hilarious anecdotes. Polite applause followed him onstage, gazes sharp and weighing. 

Jim thanked the MC and stepped up to the podium, clasping his hands together to hide their trembling, and as he opened his mouth to begin, the ballroom’s tall glass windows shattered in a spray of glass, lights blacked out, and a scream pierced the air. Jim sighed in relief. 

He moved to jump off the stage already shouting orders, when a body slammed into his, knocking the breath out of him and towing him, unresisting, up and up, out through the shattered windows into the cold night air.

‘Of fucking, course,’ thought Jim.

*****

Batman burst into the dockside warehouse in a shower shattered glass and splintered wood, his cape billowing out and lending an air menace to his towering form.

“You gotta tell your cousin to change venues. I had a neighbor whose brother caught a nasty case of food poisoning and clogged the whole building’s pipes. Absolutely dreadful. Poor guy was green for a week,” said Jim.

“You think so? But we already put down a deposit and everything,” said a rough looking man, muscles like rope and scars on his knuckles.

“This is her wedding but who do you think she’s going to be pissed at if people start vomiting on the dance floor?”

“Yeah you’re right. Thanks man,” sighed the bruiser, he looked over at the dark, towering shadow, “Hey, Batman.”

“What the hell took you so long?” said Jim, looking up from where he comfortably sat with five battered and bruised henchmen tied up at his feet.

“Rooting out the source of this plot,” Batman growled.

“The Sicilians.” Batman didn’t say anything, just silently scanned the bare, wooden walls, and Jim took that as assent and continued, “I don’t suppose you left any admissible evidence?”

Batman’s face was as still as stone, his eyes hidden by his cowl. Jim imagined he could see a tick in the tiny muscle across the man’s cheek. “Yeah, of course you did. Just wanted to double check.”

And for the second time that night, Jim found himself bodily knocked down as Batman lunged for him and dragged him down to the floor, his cape covering the both of them as the earth rocked beneath their feet and heat roared up from the floor. The warehouse was a scene of destruction, crumpling beneath its weight and toppling into the river.

The two of them staggered to their feet and ran for the exit, dragging the five bruisers behind them. Outside, the air was heavy with smoke but the ground was solid concrete. Jim felt distinctly singed but only had a few sharp stabs from small bits of wooden shrapnel, nothing major. The henchmen were the same.

Jim turned to see where Batman had gone and was surprised to find him exactly where he was before, instead of melting off into the night like he usually did. He was turned away, the slightest bit of a hunch to his shoulders. “Batman,” Jim called, tentatively.

He shuddered and Jim could just make out the terrifying rip in the cape, the ragged shape of the cowl, blood blending in with the night. Terror gripped Jim’s throat.

“Bruce.”

He shuddered, and Jim could see his face pale against the costume’s deep black, hair matted with blood, eyes unfocused with pain. And then he fled. Shot a grappling gun and dragged himself off into the night, leaving Jim to clean up his mess as usual, the bastard.

Jim sighed, staring into the flames of the burning warehouse for a moment before calling it in. “Fucking parties.”

*****

Bruce woke in a panic the next morning. “He knows, Alfred,” Bruce said, going from 0 to 350 the moment he woke up, leaping from his bed and ripping the IV from his arm. 

Alfred frowned at the blooming spot of red on Bruce’s otherwise crisp white bandages. “Indeed, Master Bruce.”

The carpets were thick and heavy, ideal for pacing and brooding. “I’ll see to breakfast, sir,” said Alfred, letting himself out.

A soft chiming filled the air on the way to the kitchen and Alfred hurriedly turned instead to the front door. When he saw who it was Alfred was too polite to let out a sigh of relief but allowed his lips to tug up into a slight smile, “Master Bruce shall be seeing you right away.”

They made their way to the kitchen where Bruce was wandering around looking bewildered. One of his large calloused hands cradled three delicate eggs and in the other was a sharp butcher knife.

Alfred marched in, his smile tugged down into a frown of disapproval. “Master Bruce.”

Bruce quickly and ineffectively hid the knife behind his back and Jim couldn’t help but let out a snort of delight. Bruce glanced at him, immediately wary. 

Jim pushed his way into the kitchen, setting down a heavy stack of paperwork on the counter and waved around his bag of doughnuts, luring Bruce closer.

“How did you know?” Bruce asked.

Jim raised one incredulous eyebrow. “I’m a detective, you’re a detective. How did you not know?”

Bruce pulled out a doughnut from the brown bag as Alfred hurriedly slipped a plate in front of the both of them. He didn’t answer, fingers ripping the doughnut into neat shreds, and nodded in question at the paperwork.

“If you’re the one creating the paperwork, the least you can do is help me cull the stack.” Jim smiled. “It’s not like secrets would’ve lasted long between us, and besides, I wasn’t trying particularly hard.”

Bruce put down the butcher knife and carefully handed the eggs over to Alfred’s waiting palm.

Jim continued, “I’ve been wooing you with advil and antibiotics for months. I’m not a subtle man.” 

Bruce met his eyes and Jim could imagine the twitch across Bruce’s cheekbones and the pull along his jaw as Batman’s brilliant smile. And then Bruce let out a grunt of laughter, his teeth flashing in a grin.


End file.
